PM Imran to perform ground-breaking of Kartarpur corridor today

NAROWAL: Preparations for groundbreaking ceremony of Kartarpur Border Corridor have been finalized and Prime Minister Imran Khan will lay the foundation stone of the corridor today (Wednesday), ARY News reported.

A high-level delegation and a group of Indian journalists will also take part in the ceremony. Former Indian cricketer, Navjot Singh Sidhu, has already arrived in Pakistan.

Contended over the border decision, Sidhu said the project that couldn’t be materialzed in 73 years finally being executed in just three months.

He thanked Prime Minister Khan for his decision to open the Kartarpur Border Corridor, and said the initiative had ‘won the hearts of 120 million Sikhs.’

The construction work of the corridor will begin after the ground breaking ceremony today.

The formal opening of the work of the Kartarpur Corridor in India had begun on Nov 26 after a formal ceremony.

After Pakistan’s initiative to open the Kartarpur Corridor on the 550th birth anniversary of Sikhism founder Baba Guru Nanak next year, India last week had agreed and decided to build the Kartarpur road corridor up to the border with Pakistan.

Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara at the bank of Ravi river in Pakistan is about four km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine.

The Sikh community was demanding for a long time to build a corridor linking India’s border district of Gurdaspur to historic gurudwara in Narowal, Pakistan. The corridor will give Indian pilgrims easy access to the shrine in Kartarpur.

According to Indian government, the Kartarpur Border corridor will begin from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district of Punjab and will end at the international border.

On October 4, the Foreign Office had said the opening of the Kartarpur border crossing was conditional on India responding to Pakistan.

The formal proposal for opening of the border surfaced after Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa had hinted at opening the Kartarpur border on the occasion of Baba Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary next year for Sikh pilgrims when he met cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu during his visit to Islamabad in the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Imran Khan in August.